Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

“Yes.”

“Pick them off as they come in.”

“You’ve got to move, Kip. You’re right where they will come!”

“I can’t get up.” I hadn’t been able to move, not even my arms, for quite a while. “Use low power, then if you brush me, it won’t matter. Do what I say! Fast!”

“Yes, Kip.” She got where she could snipe at them sideways, raised her projector and waited.

The inner door opened, a figure came in. I saw Peewee start to nail it- and I called into my radio: “Don’t shoot!”

But she was dropping the projector and running forward even as I shouted.

They were “mother thing” people.

It took six of them to carry me, only two to carry the Mother Thing. They sang to me soothingly all the time they were rigging a litter. I swallowed another codeine tablet before they lifted me, as even with their gentleness any movement hurt. It didn’t take long to get me into their ship, for they had landed almost at the tunnel mouth, no doubt crushing the walkway-I hoped so.

Once I was safely inside Peewee opened my helmet and unzipped the front of my suit. “Kip! Aren’t they wonderful?”

“Yes.” I was getting dizzier from the drug but was feeling better. “When do we raise ship?”

“We’ve already started.”

“They’re taking us home?” I’d have to tell Mr. Charton what a big help the codeine was.

“Huh? Oh, my, no! We’re headed for Vega.”

I fainted.

Chapter 9

I had been dreaming that I was home; this awoke me with a jerk. “Mother Thing!”

(“Good morning, my son. I am happy to see that you are feeling better.”)

“Oh, I feel fine. I’ve had a good night’s rest-” I stared, then blurted: “-you’re dead!” I couldn’t stop it.

Her answer sounded warmly, gently humorous, the way you correct a child who has made a natural mistake. (“No, dear, I was merely frozen. I am not as frail as you seem to think me.”)

I blinked and looked again. “Then it wasn’t a dream?”

(“No, it was not a dream.”)

“I thought I was home and-” I tried to sit up, managed only to raise my head. “I am home!” My room! Clothes closet on the left-hall door behind the Mother Thing-my desk on the right, piled with books and with a Centerville High pennant over it-window beyond it, with the old elm almost filling it-sun-speckled leaves stirring in a breeze.

My slipstick was where I had left it.

Things started to wobble, then I figured it out. I had dreamed only the silly part at the end. Vega-I had been groggy with codeine. “You brought me home.”

(“We brought you home … to your other home. My home.”)

The bed started to sway. I clutched at it but my arms didn’t move. The Mother Thing was still singing. (“You needed your own nest. So we prepared it.”)

“Mother Thing, I’m confused.”

(“We know that a bird grows well faster in its own nest. So we built yours.”) “Bird” and “nest” weren’t what she sang, but an Unabridged won’t give anything closer.

I took a deep breath to steady down. I understood her-that’s what she was best at, making you understand. This wasn’t my room and I wasn’t home; it simply looked like it. But I was still terribly confused.

I looked around and wondered how I could have been mistaken.

The light slanted in the window from a wrong direction. The ceiling didn’t have the patch in it from the time I built a hide-out in the attic and knocked plaster down by hammering. It wasn’t the right shade, either.

The books were too neat and clean; they had that candy-box look. I couldn’t recognize the bindings. The over-all effect was mighty close, but details were not right.

(“I like this room,”) the Mother Thing was singing. (“It looks like you, Kip.”)

“Mother Thing,” I said weakly, “how did you do it?”

(“We asked you. And Peewee helped.”)

I thought, “But Peewee has never seen my room either,” then decided that Peewee had seen enough American homes to be a consulting expert. “Peewee is here?”

(“She’ll be in shortly.”)